They've moved Greece to the Middle East have they? And here I'd always thought it was part of continental Europe, and arguably the birthplace of Western Civilization as well.
...just conspire with the neighbours one day, and thank him for turning it off. Have the neighbours do the same. He may protest that it's still on, but you simply assure him that you certainly can't hear anything anymore (for drama, cock your head and pause a second when you do this). Now obviously he'll take the thing down and maybe try to fix it and remount it, but continue to ignore it and be pleasant to him. Hopefully he'll get the idea that even if the thing isn't working anymore, it obviously was not worthwhile in the first place, and either pack it away or ship it back for a refund.
...I don't want to hear about it. Mind that expect that sharp a razor to come with safety wires, cause I'm not going to be able to fork out for skin transplants after Gillette charges me, what, three million dollars for this sort of thing by the time it hits the market.
Interesting that this is the sort of thing that Ray Kurzweil predicted. Kurzweil's generalization of Moore's law is the sort of thing that I suspect is largely correct, though how exactly it manifests itself is something that will be interesting to observe. I recommend familiarizing yourself with his thinking if you have any interest in the future of technology and society, and in particular look into buying his latest book. Disclosure note: I have neither affiliation nor even connection to Kurzweil, I simply find his thinking on the issues of future technology to be both fascinating and compelling.
We're going to see ever more rapid acceleration of technology at an increasing rate that will one day leave Moore's Law in the dust, and the impact on society promises to be phenomenal. Just the notion of ever-more-sophisticated portable gadgetry is already altering society in very interesting ways (and yes, some of those alterations are annoying or inconvenient--oblivious cell phones users and so forth). But with the way these gadgets are going, we're going to rapidly outstrip the imaginations of Star Trek writers in terms of the capability and utility of such ubiquitous and powerful devices. I look forward to having the electronic equivalent of a Swiss Army knife (and yes, I'm sure there's going to have to be some clever work done on improving the user interface on such units--but there are inventive types out there working on that sort of thing). It all promises to be very interesting.
Cause otherwise it would be no fun. Seriously, did you look at the video of the one in the guys hand? Little fish hook legs. I don't care what medical explanation can be provided as to why that wouldn't hurt or harm me: Unless you've gotten me drunker that Homer's post-lottery-win tour through the Duff brewery, NFW.
Man, I can't wait until this new technology is implemented. Just think; we'll have something to look forward to on the Internet besides all those cumbersome, hand-coded HTML pages. Hurrah!
...but we get a subwoofer that can shake your fillings out. Sigh. On the up-side, I'm sure I'll get a chance to report back to Slashdot as to what one of these things feel like once my college-age (and apparently half-deaf) neighbours procure one and do their damndest to shake apart this poorly-built condo complex.
This is actually a topic I was hoping would come up again. I know there have been various thoughts and ideas ciculated around as to how one could further decentralize the Net, but let me put it to the Slashdot crowd: What sort of engineering can be done to further prise the Internet from control of any government, anywhere? I don't assume a single solution, and I don't expect that any solution(s) will be necessarily simple or straightforward. This is a political problem that the Net is facing, but perhaps engineers can be the ones to solve it.
I leave this as wide open as possible. We need a reasonable definition of the problem (this is not just a matter of addressing--it's a question of engineering in ways to reliably route around censorship), and some good thoughts as to solutions. Like I said, I'm sure there are plenty of ideas already out there, so if you know of any good schemes, reply to this post and link to them!
People ask if the UN would be any worse than the US. Well, yes. Much, much worse, and you all know it too. To paraphrase Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, everyone acts like the UN is some sort of conventional analogue of the United Federation of Planets, a utopian universal government where everyone comes to peacefully work together and solve the problems of the world. The reality is that a staggering number of UN members are dictatorships (and please, no cracks about the US being one of those dictatorships--you might as well go spit in the face of someone who has suffered under an actual dictatorship to compare the US to, say, North Korea). And make no mistake, these are the countries that most desire to have more and more control over the Internet, since the free flow of information can only undermine the lies upon which their power is based.
So please, let's get the discussion going. The goal? Help keep the Internet out of the hands of those who would strive to destroy it, or twist it to their own purposes. Think creatively, talk about it, and get the links going. Hell, if you've got a really solid idea, pay a few bucks to register and set up a web site about it. Huffing and puffing and complaining about it is one thing: Actually getting ideas out, and pitching them back and forth, settling on some solutions and starting to hack together some code--that's how you can really help to keep the Internet safe.
So here we go with another round of "The future's going to rock"/"The future's going to suck" debate. The utopian idealists versus the eco-depressive fetishists. If there's one thing I'm sure of, if we do someday go through a Singularity-type event, someone somewhere will be whining about how the benefits of it aren't distrbibuted with perfect equality.
Let me speak as someone who actually has read the book, which I would assume sets me somewhat apart from most of the 'reviews' in this thread. Kurzweil's good and well worth reading if you want any idea at all as to where things will probably eventually go. I say probably because, of course, there are no guarantees (we could all get smacked by a massive comet tomorrow--this is not a forgiving universe). And I say eventually, because like so many others, I think Kurzweil's timeline is a bit optimistic. But when I say a bit optimistic, I mean by perhaps a decade or two, not centuries or millennia (Kurzweil addresses this all in depth in the book, and many of the comments on this thread make the very mistake he's trying to educate people out of--thinking in terms of linear progression when we're actually seeing exponential growth across a massive number of fronts). I think Kurzweil is being optimistic on a personal level due to his own age--the man's in his fifities, and no doubt worries about the odds of personally surviving to see such the radical shift that he is prognosticating and anticipating.
What intrigues me most is the prospect for human enhancement. I consider this to be the most desirable, and perhaps even most inevitable, course towards the Singularity. We already have implants to allow deaf people to hear by tying directly into the auditory nerve (cochlear implants). We will follow that eventually with similar implants for vision, and eventually for other aspects of the brain itself. What will start as a humane effort to return normal function to those deprived of it will eventually permit us to merge with powerful computer systems, and gain the advantages that will come with that (imagine that your very imagination is augmented to include a high-powered CAD system, along with perfect memory recall, should you wish to use it). If we're smart, we can work to hone the best aspects of our humanity (our imagination, our sense of wonder, our empathy) while minimizing the worst of our nature (the primitive bloodlust that we carry as a result of our mammalian nature). Yes, yes, it could all go very wrong, but to those who point fingers towards nuclear weapons as evidence of our incorigibly beastly nature, I'd point out that they have been used only twice, and since the horror of their consequences have sunk in, they have not been used in anger since. Most people are good, decent folk. The eco-depressives strive to convince you otherwise, though the lack of mass suicide among the green folks is perhaps the best evidence that even they don't believe things are as utterly hopeless as they say. Yes, we have problems. No, they are not insurmountable, even with the technology that we have today, to say nothing of the technology we will have tomorrow.
Enhancement of human intelligence also allows us to avoid most of the whole "Is Strong A.I. possible?" debate. By working to increase both the scope and scale of human intelligence, we're already working with a source of 'I', and are layering in the 'A', seeing what works and what doesn't. An evolutionary approach, if you will. Ultimately, I don't really know if it will be possible to transfer my thought processes from biological neurons to nanocircuitry, but besides the notion of a 'soul', I really don't see why it couldn't happen. As thinkers on the subject have pointed out, you lose brain cells all the time (even if you don't consume as much beer as the average engineering student), and yet you retain a sense of continuity with your past self. If you were to imagine a process that replaced your existing brain cells one at a time with artificial neurons that were functionally identical to the cells
Kaku didn't invent this. These are the Kardashev levels of civilization, with the minor addition of a "Category 0" to describe our current level of development. However, the Kardashev levels are much more about our capacity for productive energy utilization within the various 'islands' that we will occupy as our development progresses. Due to the relative distances involved, the Earth is like an island in our solar system, our solar system is like an island in our galaxy, and our galaxy is like an island in our universe.
The reality, of course, is that the movement from one stage to the next will not be a series of discrete jumps, but rather a blurry escalation in capability. We will have started to move out into the solar system long before we can use all the energy available to us on Earth, and we will have started to move out into the rest of the galaxy long before we have completely and utterly transformed the resources of our solar system. Good of Kaku to promote the idea, though the world government stuff sounds way too hippy (not to mention being a very bad idea--if said unified government should turn despotic, there'll be no Berlin Wall to flee over).
Yeah, but knowing the id software crew, any boobie mods would involve either a) decomposing zombie boobies, or b) flying boobies with fangs. It's really just best not to think about it too much.
Her work deals with a divide as significant as the one between left and right, in this case running between what she calls "stasists" and "dynamists". It's a fascinating subject, and a good book.
I think the first thing to consider is that car ownership itself would probably begin to decline significantly if this sort of technology were to be introduced. Think about--why own your own car when taxi companies would be able to run these vehicles without drivers, thus saving the vast majority of the cost. Not to mention that the economics of hybrid vehicles begin to make a lot more sense if you assume a lot of driving (presuming also adequate and well-directed maintenance), and what you would get is efficient, point-to-point transporation with a minimum of muss, fuss and cost. Tie such a system to GPS-enabled cell phones, and you would be able to summon a vehicle at any time to any location. I think that would be pretty neat. And a much more efficient use of resources (think of how much time your car spends sitting idle, despite what you've paid for it).
As for insurance, such vehicles need not be perfect, they simply need to be better by a reasonable margin than the average human driver, and insurance companies will likely cover it (or the companies that own fleets of such vehicles could cover the costs of any settlements out of revenue). Can such systems exist? I'm certain the answer is yes, but I think it will take more than just building smarter cars. I think that the most economical solution will be to adapt both roads and the vehicles that travel on them into a single integrated system. I say that because of the one problem that I see every year that is not going to have an easy solution--winter.
I live in Canada, and as such I see winter driving conditions that defeat all but the best human drivers. And I have no idea how you would design a technological solution to it. I'm talking roads covered with blowing snow, such that the nifty vision system you built for your automated car, the one that can pick out the painted lines on the road with ease, has nothing to work with. Black ice that defies almost any efforts to brake (and is subject to peculiar feedback conditions that cause even experienced drivers to do exactly the wrong things to try to bring the vehicle back under control). I'm sure that it would be almost trivial to design an automated vehicle control system that would work well in southern California. I'm not so sure about Canada (or the northern US for that matter).
As such, I think that you would need to embed a reasonable amount of information in systems (buried RFID tags, perhaps?) into the roads themselves, to give the automated vehicles something to reinforce their autonomous systems. And there would have to be a lot of thinking in unexpected directions. I was on the bus the other night, and as it went around the corner, I reflected on the unique properties of a vehicle with such length. Specifically, it was a tight corner, and as such the middle of the bus actually passed over the edge of the corner as it turned, even though front and back wheels were all on the road (you can picture this with a little effort). Now, there was a sidewalk at this corner, and I found myself pondering the fact that if the bus were automated, how would it deal with the possible presence of someone standing right at the corner? At no time would its systems detect the person as being an obstacle directly in front, and yet by virtue of its dimensions, it would stand a good chance of broadsiding them as it turned. And that's just one oddball consideration--I'm sure there would be many more. As such, I think you would have to contemplate the system as a whole--roads, vehicles, passengers, and pedestrians--in order to design generalized solutions that could be implemented on a cost-effective basis.
On the up-side, the benefits of such a system would be obvious. If you chose not to own your own car, but still spent as much on transportation as you currently do, you should theoretically be able to afford a much nicer mode of transportation when you are travelling (you would effectively be splitting the cost of a nicer car with the many other people who would be using it when you are
There's much dismissal of the notion of aliens taking our religion seriously. And I tend to agree. But it does make for a fun "what if" scenario.
What if the aliens did take to our religious beliefs? What if the Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons did manage to convert them? Either scenario would be particularly entertaining, since presumably the aliens would then undertake the same activities as the human Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons on Earth, to the limits that their biologies would allow. Hell, I'd look forward to them coming to my door. I would be able to forgive all the other shortcomings of the 'future' (lack of flying cars, rocketpacks, etc.) if every now I could open my door to find a couple of small grey aliens in white shirts and black ties, earnest looks on their faces, asking me about my thoughts on God. I'd still slam the door in their faces, of course, but I'd have a little "Well, whaddya know?" smile on my face as I did so.
Indeed, conversion to any branch of Christianity would provide endless entertainment, since we would have yet another party laying claim to Jerusalem as the holiest city. Or perhaps we could one day look forward to a "Passion" remake, complete with an alien Jesus dragging the cross? I wonder, would the Christian aliens still nurse a mild resentment of the Jews? Or would aliens be more likely to become Jews themselves, able to accept the idea of God but not a human Messiah? Man, would that ever get some people going. Osama bin Laden would just shit himself.
Of course, they may not go for a mainstream religion. Maybe they'll become convinced that the ultimate arbiter of religious truth is some dude leading a cult somewhere in the wilds of Montana. Maybe they'd all become Branch Davidians, or some equivalent thereof.
Mind you, the alternative to us converting them is even more fun. I personally would go to church--or whatever you would call it--every week, if the purpose were to worship some whacked-out alien god. All hail the Great Slug of the Cosmos, perhaps. Hell, I'll even worship Kah'less if I get to play with a Bat'leth.
Thinking about this sort of stuff is more fun than a box full of puppies.
Lego was by far my favourite toy growing up. Indeed, I played with the stuff so much that I am convinced that it has affected my thinking patterns, and in good ways. My visual-spatial sense is excellent, and my mind is forever trying to break down problems into modular pieces; or, seeing a collection of modular components, trying to figure out intriguing ways to assemble them into a larger system. In short, ladies and gentlemen, I think in Lego.
That said, I hope that the Lego company goes about this the right way. The things I always wanted as a youngster were more hinges and other such articulated pieces in order to build things like spacecraft and vehicles with moving parts; doors and hatches that open, sensors that swivel, and so forth. Lego's strengths were always in the design of clever models that most of us would build at least once. You could learn some neat tricks by understanding how the model designers accomplished a particular effect using a small number of bricks. I agree with posters to a previous Lego story who criticized the overabundance of specialized pieces (anathema to the creative Lego builder) and the rather exorbitant prices of Lego kits.
Perhaps Lego has decided that its future is no longer in robotics, but computers can play a role in its revival. Embrace the Internet! As so many slashdotters will attest, there are large numbers of people for whom Lego remains a unique creative outlet. Work to bring them together through the Net, and offer to sell them what they want through that same channel. More standardized, well-thought-out basic bricks, offered with the promise of volume discounts through Internet purchases. Parents who still enjoy Lego and can get access to their favourite toy in bulk and share their love of creating with a community of fellow builders will have kids who will get an early taste of the joys of building with little plastic blocks, and will thus pass on the hobby to the next generation.
I'm a huge space enthusiast. Huge. I love just about anything that promises to bring the cost of space access to a reasonable (read: below $200 per kilogram) levels. I've been following the X-Prize competition with great interest.
That said, I can't get behind this space elevator push. First, the economics of it won't scale to meet a wide range of demand fluctuations. What if you build it and then find out that demand for it is only a tenth of what you had predicted? There's no way to scale down the sunk costs involved--it's an all or nothing sort of proposition.
Second, it would represent a prime terrorist target. No set of defensive systems could hope to cover against every possible means of attack. Missiles, bombs, lasers, and who knows what else. And we haven't even covered the subject of action by a hostile nation-state, which could presumably marshall far more impressive resources to the task of bringing down a cable.
Third, it represents completely unproven technology. Better to go with a multistage rocketplane or some variation on that theme. Design one that can be built with the equivalent of off-the-shelf parts and build it with a multi-purpose role. A launch vehicle that could also effectively double as a system for high-speed transoceanic delivery would have great commercial and military applications, and would be developed that much more quickly and economically.
In short, the space elevator is a nifty idea in many respects, but it won't happen until the construction of such a system is relatively trivial. When one business guy turns to another and says: "You know, we're paying a lot of money for pilots for our launch vehicles. Maybe we should just build an elevator and get some high school kids to run it."
...because if you say to your relatively non-techie friend that he or she should try using GNU/Linux as their operating system, they're going to hear it as "New Linux". And then they's going to ask you what happened to the old Linux. And then you're going to have to snap and kill them.
Slashdot Mirror
"slain by a mythical hero from the Middle East?"
They've moved Greece to the Middle East have they? And here I'd always thought it was part of continental Europe, and arguably the birthplace of Western Civilization as well.
...just conspire with the neighbours one day, and thank him for turning it off. Have the neighbours do the same. He may protest that it's still on, but you simply assure him that you certainly can't hear anything anymore (for drama, cock your head and pause a second when you do this). Now obviously he'll take the thing down and maybe try to fix it and remount it, but continue to ignore it and be pleasant to him. Hopefully he'll get the idea that even if the thing isn't working anymore, it obviously was not worthwhile in the first place, and either pack it away or ship it back for a refund.
...I don't want to hear about it. Mind that expect that sharp a razor to come with safety wires, cause I'm not going to be able to fork out for skin transplants after Gillette charges me, what, three million dollars for this sort of thing by the time it hits the market.
We're going to see ever more rapid acceleration of technology at an increasing rate that will one day leave Moore's Law in the dust, and the impact on society promises to be phenomenal. Just the notion of ever-more-sophisticated portable gadgetry is already altering society in very interesting ways (and yes, some of those alterations are annoying or inconvenient--oblivious cell phones users and so forth). But with the way these gadgets are going, we're going to rapidly outstrip the imaginations of Star Trek writers in terms of the capability and utility of such ubiquitous and powerful devices. I look forward to having the electronic equivalent of a Swiss Army knife (and yes, I'm sure there's going to have to be some clever work done on improving the user interface on such units--but there are inventive types out there working on that sort of thing). It all promises to be very interesting.
Cause otherwise it would be no fun. Seriously, did you look at the video of the one in the guys hand? Little fish hook legs. I don't care what medical explanation can be provided as to why that wouldn't hurt or harm me: Unless you've gotten me drunker that Homer's post-lottery-win tour through the Duff brewery, NFW.
You're new here, aren't you?
Man, I can't wait until this new technology is implemented. Just think; we'll have something to look forward to on the Internet besides all those cumbersome, hand-coded HTML pages. Hurrah!
...to watch a television program in the bathroom while doing your business, I might recommend a bit more fibre in your diet.
I take it you perhaps weren't around during the Trudeau years?
Ahhh, I'm so punny.
...but we get a subwoofer that can shake your fillings out. Sigh. On the up-side, I'm sure I'll get a chance to report back to Slashdot as to what one of these things feel like once my college-age (and apparently half-deaf) neighbours procure one and do their damndest to shake apart this poorly-built condo complex.
This is actually a topic I was hoping would come up again. I know there have been various thoughts and ideas ciculated around as to how one could further decentralize the Net, but let me put it to the Slashdot crowd: What sort of engineering can be done to further prise the Internet from control of any government, anywhere? I don't assume a single solution, and I don't expect that any solution(s) will be necessarily simple or straightforward. This is a political problem that the Net is facing, but perhaps engineers can be the ones to solve it.
I leave this as wide open as possible. We need a reasonable definition of the problem (this is not just a matter of addressing--it's a question of engineering in ways to reliably route around censorship), and some good thoughts as to solutions. Like I said, I'm sure there are plenty of ideas already out there, so if you know of any good schemes, reply to this post and link to them!
People ask if the UN would be any worse than the US. Well, yes. Much, much worse, and you all know it too. To paraphrase Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, everyone acts like the UN is some sort of conventional analogue of the United Federation of Planets, a utopian universal government where everyone comes to peacefully work together and solve the problems of the world. The reality is that a staggering number of UN members are dictatorships (and please, no cracks about the US being one of those dictatorships--you might as well go spit in the face of someone who has suffered under an actual dictatorship to compare the US to, say, North Korea). And make no mistake, these are the countries that most desire to have more and more control over the Internet, since the free flow of information can only undermine the lies upon which their power is based.
So please, let's get the discussion going. The goal? Help keep the Internet out of the hands of those who would strive to destroy it, or twist it to their own purposes. Think creatively, talk about it, and get the links going. Hell, if you've got a really solid idea, pay a few bucks to register and set up a web site about it. Huffing and puffing and complaining about it is one thing: Actually getting ideas out, and pitching them back and forth, settling on some solutions and starting to hack together some code--that's how you can really help to keep the Internet safe.
...will they go after her little dog, too?
So here we go with another round of "The future's going to rock"/"The future's going to suck" debate. The utopian idealists versus the eco-depressive fetishists. If there's one thing I'm sure of, if we do someday go through a Singularity-type event, someone somewhere will be whining about how the benefits of it aren't distrbibuted with perfect equality.
Let me speak as someone who actually has read the book, which I would assume sets me somewhat apart from most of the 'reviews' in this thread. Kurzweil's good and well worth reading if you want any idea at all as to where things will probably eventually go. I say probably because, of course, there are no guarantees (we could all get smacked by a massive comet tomorrow--this is not a forgiving universe). And I say eventually, because like so many others, I think Kurzweil's timeline is a bit optimistic. But when I say a bit optimistic, I mean by perhaps a decade or two, not centuries or millennia (Kurzweil addresses this all in depth in the book, and many of the comments on this thread make the very mistake he's trying to educate people out of--thinking in terms of linear progression when we're actually seeing exponential growth across a massive number of fronts). I think Kurzweil is being optimistic on a personal level due to his own age--the man's in his fifities, and no doubt worries about the odds of personally surviving to see such the radical shift that he is prognosticating and anticipating.
What intrigues me most is the prospect for human enhancement. I consider this to be the most desirable, and perhaps even most inevitable, course towards the Singularity. We already have implants to allow deaf people to hear by tying directly into the auditory nerve (cochlear implants). We will follow that eventually with similar implants for vision, and eventually for other aspects of the brain itself. What will start as a humane effort to return normal function to those deprived of it will eventually permit us to merge with powerful computer systems, and gain the advantages that will come with that (imagine that your very imagination is augmented to include a high-powered CAD system, along with perfect memory recall, should you wish to use it). If we're smart, we can work to hone the best aspects of our humanity (our imagination, our sense of wonder, our empathy) while minimizing the worst of our nature (the primitive bloodlust that we carry as a result of our mammalian nature). Yes, yes, it could all go very wrong, but to those who point fingers towards nuclear weapons as evidence of our incorigibly beastly nature, I'd point out that they have been used only twice, and since the horror of their consequences have sunk in, they have not been used in anger since. Most people are good, decent folk. The eco-depressives strive to convince you otherwise, though the lack of mass suicide among the green folks is perhaps the best evidence that even they don't believe things are as utterly hopeless as they say. Yes, we have problems. No, they are not insurmountable, even with the technology that we have today, to say nothing of the technology we will have tomorrow.
Enhancement of human intelligence also allows us to avoid most of the whole "Is Strong A.I. possible?" debate. By working to increase both the scope and scale of human intelligence, we're already working with a source of 'I', and are layering in the 'A', seeing what works and what doesn't. An evolutionary approach, if you will. Ultimately, I don't really know if it will be possible to transfer my thought processes from biological neurons to nanocircuitry, but besides the notion of a 'soul', I really don't see why it couldn't happen. As thinkers on the subject have pointed out, you lose brain cells all the time (even if you don't consume as much beer as the average engineering student), and yet you retain a sense of continuity with your past self. If you were to imagine a process that replaced your existing brain cells one at a time with artificial neurons that were functionally identical to the cells
Kaku didn't invent this. These are the Kardashev levels of civilization, with the minor addition of a "Category 0" to describe our current level of development. However, the Kardashev levels are much more about our capacity for productive energy utilization within the various 'islands' that we will occupy as our development progresses. Due to the relative distances involved, the Earth is like an island in our solar system, our solar system is like an island in our galaxy, and our galaxy is like an island in our universe.
The reality, of course, is that the movement from one stage to the next will not be a series of discrete jumps, but rather a blurry escalation in capability. We will have started to move out into the solar system long before we can use all the energy available to us on Earth, and we will have started to move out into the rest of the galaxy long before we have completely and utterly transformed the resources of our solar system. Good of Kaku to promote the idea, though the world government stuff sounds way too hippy (not to mention being a very bad idea--if said unified government should turn despotic, there'll be no Berlin Wall to flee over).
Yeah, but knowing the id software crew, any boobie mods would involve either a) decomposing zombie boobies, or b) flying boobies with fangs. It's really just best not to think about it too much.
Her work deals with a divide as significant as the one between left and right, in this case running between what she calls "stasists" and "dynamists". It's a fascinating subject, and a good book.
As for insurance, such vehicles need not be perfect, they simply need to be better by a reasonable margin than the average human driver, and insurance companies will likely cover it (or the companies that own fleets of such vehicles could cover the costs of any settlements out of revenue). Can such systems exist? I'm certain the answer is yes, but I think it will take more than just building smarter cars. I think that the most economical solution will be to adapt both roads and the vehicles that travel on them into a single integrated system. I say that because of the one problem that I see every year that is not going to have an easy solution--winter.
I live in Canada, and as such I see winter driving conditions that defeat all but the best human drivers. And I have no idea how you would design a technological solution to it. I'm talking roads covered with blowing snow, such that the nifty vision system you built for your automated car, the one that can pick out the painted lines on the road with ease, has nothing to work with. Black ice that defies almost any efforts to brake (and is subject to peculiar feedback conditions that cause even experienced drivers to do exactly the wrong things to try to bring the vehicle back under control). I'm sure that it would be almost trivial to design an automated vehicle control system that would work well in southern California. I'm not so sure about Canada (or the northern US for that matter).
As such, I think that you would need to embed a reasonable amount of information in systems (buried RFID tags, perhaps?) into the roads themselves, to give the automated vehicles something to reinforce their autonomous systems. And there would have to be a lot of thinking in unexpected directions. I was on the bus the other night, and as it went around the corner, I reflected on the unique properties of a vehicle with such length. Specifically, it was a tight corner, and as such the middle of the bus actually passed over the edge of the corner as it turned, even though front and back wheels were all on the road (you can picture this with a little effort). Now, there was a sidewalk at this corner, and I found myself pondering the fact that if the bus were automated, how would it deal with the possible presence of someone standing right at the corner? At no time would its systems detect the person as being an obstacle directly in front, and yet by virtue of its dimensions, it would stand a good chance of broadsiding them as it turned. And that's just one oddball consideration--I'm sure there would be many more. As such, I think you would have to contemplate the system as a whole--roads, vehicles, passengers, and pedestrians--in order to design generalized solutions that could be implemented on a cost-effective basis.
On the up-side, the benefits of such a system would be obvious. If you chose not to own your own car, but still spent as much on transportation as you currently do, you should theoretically be able to afford a much nicer mode of transportation when you are travelling (you would effectively be splitting the cost of a nicer car with the many other people who would be using it when you are
There's much dismissal of the notion of aliens taking our religion seriously. And I tend to agree. But it does make for a fun "what if" scenario.
What if the aliens did take to our religious beliefs? What if the Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons did manage to convert them? Either scenario would be particularly entertaining, since presumably the aliens would then undertake the same activities as the human Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons on Earth, to the limits that their biologies would allow. Hell, I'd look forward to them coming to my door. I would be able to forgive all the other shortcomings of the 'future' (lack of flying cars, rocketpacks, etc.) if every now I could open my door to find a couple of small grey aliens in white shirts and black ties, earnest looks on their faces, asking me about my thoughts on God. I'd still slam the door in their faces, of course, but I'd have a little "Well, whaddya know?" smile on my face as I did so.
Indeed, conversion to any branch of Christianity would provide endless entertainment, since we would have yet another party laying claim to Jerusalem as the holiest city. Or perhaps we could one day look forward to a "Passion" remake, complete with an alien Jesus dragging the cross? I wonder, would the Christian aliens still nurse a mild resentment of the Jews? Or would aliens be more likely to become Jews themselves, able to accept the idea of God but not a human Messiah? Man, would that ever get some people going. Osama bin Laden would just shit himself.
Of course, they may not go for a mainstream religion. Maybe they'll become convinced that the ultimate arbiter of religious truth is some dude leading a cult somewhere in the wilds of Montana. Maybe they'd all become Branch Davidians, or some equivalent thereof.
Mind you, the alternative to us converting them is even more fun. I personally would go to church--or whatever you would call it--every week, if the purpose were to worship some whacked-out alien god. All hail the Great Slug of the Cosmos, perhaps. Hell, I'll even worship Kah'less if I get to play with a Bat'leth.
Thinking about this sort of stuff is more fun than a box full of puppies.
Lego was by far my favourite toy growing up. Indeed, I played with the stuff so much that I am convinced that it has affected my thinking patterns, and in good ways. My visual-spatial sense is excellent, and my mind is forever trying to break down problems into modular pieces; or, seeing a collection of modular components, trying to figure out intriguing ways to assemble them into a larger system. In short, ladies and gentlemen, I think in Lego.
That said, I hope that the Lego company goes about this the right way. The things I always wanted as a youngster were more hinges and other such articulated pieces in order to build things like spacecraft and vehicles with moving parts; doors and hatches that open, sensors that swivel, and so forth. Lego's strengths were always in the design of clever models that most of us would build at least once. You could learn some neat tricks by understanding how the model designers accomplished a particular effect using a small number of bricks. I agree with posters to a previous Lego story who criticized the overabundance of specialized pieces (anathema to the creative Lego builder) and the rather exorbitant prices of Lego kits.
Perhaps Lego has decided that its future is no longer in robotics, but computers can play a role in its revival. Embrace the Internet! As so many slashdotters will attest, there are large numbers of people for whom Lego remains a unique creative outlet. Work to bring them together through the Net, and offer to sell them what they want through that same channel. More standardized, well-thought-out basic bricks, offered with the promise of volume discounts through Internet purchases. Parents who still enjoy Lego and can get access to their favourite toy in bulk and share their love of creating with a community of fellow builders will have kids who will get an early taste of the joys of building with little plastic blocks, and will thus pass on the hobby to the next generation.
Sheesh.
Timothy, Michael.
Michael, Timothy.
I just thought that you gentlemen might want to be introduced to one another, since you seem to share tastes in reading material.
I mean, for pity's sake, as of my writing this, it's still on the front page.
I use a Bounce sheet. Keeps my comp springtime fresh.
I'm a huge space enthusiast. Huge. I love just about anything that promises to bring the cost of space access to a reasonable (read: below $200 per kilogram) levels. I've been following the X-Prize competition with great interest.
That said, I can't get behind this space elevator push. First, the economics of it won't scale to meet a wide range of demand fluctuations. What if you build it and then find out that demand for it is only a tenth of what you had predicted? There's no way to scale down the sunk costs involved--it's an all or nothing sort of proposition.
Second, it would represent a prime terrorist target. No set of defensive systems could hope to cover against every possible means of attack. Missiles, bombs, lasers, and who knows what else. And we haven't even covered the subject of action by a hostile nation-state, which could presumably marshall far more impressive resources to the task of bringing down a cable.
Third, it represents completely unproven technology. Better to go with a multistage rocketplane or some variation on that theme. Design one that can be built with the equivalent of off-the-shelf parts and build it with a multi-purpose role. A launch vehicle that could also effectively double as a system for high-speed transoceanic delivery would have great commercial and military applications, and would be developed that much more quickly and economically.
In short, the space elevator is a nifty idea in many respects, but it won't happen until the construction of such a system is relatively trivial. When one business guy turns to another and says: "You know, we're paying a lot of money for pilots for our launch vehicles. Maybe we should just build an elevator and get some high school kids to run it."
...because if you say to your relatively non-techie friend that he or she should try using GNU/Linux as their operating system, they're going to hear it as "New Linux". And then they's going to ask you what happened to the old Linux. And then you're going to have to snap and kill them.